


EROS UNBOUND

by dommific, pickletea



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: All the Death is Off-Screen Okay?, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Bodice-Ripper, Childhood Friends, Dommi and Pickle Dig Atonement and This Is Our Loving Tribute, Don't copy to another site, Library Sex, M/M, Main Character Believed to Be Dead, Minor Character Death, until he gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-23 04:21:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/pseuds/dommific, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickletea/pseuds/pickletea
Summary: His companion takes one for himself. “I would think someone as fetching as yourself would enjoy such an event.”Yuuri swallows the remainder of his champagne. “I would rather not discuss it.”There’s something about this stranger, Yuuri thinks as he carefully watches him from behind his mask. A gravity surrounds him that Yuuri is pulled into, like an inescapable orbit. His presence casts Yuuri’s thoughts to a long-haired boy wearing eyes like the sea and a smile like a Valentine card from his youth he once believed in more than anyone.Before he turned eighteen, Katsuki Yuuri lost just about everything -- his parents, his wealth, and the love of his life -- all due to misfortune beyond his control. To save himself and his beloved sister, he decides to marry the heir of the wealthiest local family strictly as a business transaction.A chance encounter with a stranger may set his salvation in motion; though is he really a stranger at all?DOMMI AND PICKLE PRESENT -- EROS UNBOUND. FATE CONSPIRED TO SEPARATE THEM, BUT IT WAS NO MATCH FOR THEIR BURNING LOVE.





	EROS UNBOUND

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Listen to the playlist [on Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5p3zEGtnFOEsSEfuLjLiQZ?si=S_fR9fuPRMuNNlT8lDp-qQ)

If it was not a necessity to go into town, Katsuki Yuuri would certainly avoid every instance like society does a leper. Alas, being the head of his family means it is impossible to avoid, and so he finds himself riding in a carriage on a dreary Tuesday to dine at a teahouse. This visit is not to be one of pleasure — at least, not for Yuuri. He arrives before his escort, arranging his posture so the repaired hemlines of his trousers, as well as the elbow patches on his suit, are not readily visible. 

“Yuuri, my darling,” calls a voice that sounds pleasant laced with a palpable undercurrent of something crude. Yuuri stands at the arrival of Shadrack with a tight, emotionless smile. Shadrack von Buelow is handsome enough with light brown hair and eyes of a piercing green. His personality undoes his physical comeliness, as he does not greet Yuuri with a handshake but rather an unnecessarily wet kiss to the back of his gloved hand. “Always brightens my day when I see you,” Shadrack announces. 

Yuuri allows him to push in his chair. When he can’t see, he wipes the saliva off onto his trousers. “Of course.”

The tea and sandwiches are brought then, and Yuuri lets Shadrack take his selections first. Yuuri selects one of crab and celery with butter, and he only takes a solitary prim bite upon receiving Shadrack’s approving nod. “Have you given further consideration to my proposal?” Shadrack asks after he polishes off a whole cucumber sandwich. Yuuri prefers those to the crab, but he has to defer to Shadrack in all things or else he will grow quite displeased.

“I am…still deciding,” Yuuri offers with a smile. It is not genuine. It could not be given the situation at hand.

“You know how badly you’re underwater, darling,” Shadrack explains, as though Yuuri does not review his ledgers for any possible expense to cut until dawn every morning. There are none. His options were exhausted eighteen months ago. “A simple _yes_ and your problems go away,” Shadrack continues. His eyes sweep over Yuuri in a manner both possessive and lecherous, making Yuuri’s stomach roil. Like many people, he’s too weak-nerved for Devil’s bargains. “And we both get what we ache for.”

Yuuri ached for someone once, someone who treated him like a person instead of a prize with eyes like aquamarine gems and a smile like a Valentine heart. “I will finalize some arrangements with my sister,” Yuuri replies after a pregnant pause. “You’ll have your answer within a fortnight.”

“Father’s birthday gala is next week,” Shadrack says. “Your invitation should arrive by courier by the time you get home from this meeting.”

Yuuri’s smile is close-lipped and his eyes are dull as lead. “Of course.”

Shadrack stands, giving his hand another wet kiss, and he pats Yuuri’s cheek. “I’ll see you in a week,” he says.

Yuuri nods as he exits the teahouse. As he rides back to the Yu-Topia Estate, he realizes he’s drawn this out as long as he’s able. The fortnight is a buffer, but Shadrack will want him on his arm next week at the gala. The carriage arrives back home, and Yuuri thanks his footman as always. Yuuri does not go upstairs to change, instead walking to the drawing room to discuss his plans with his elder sister.

Mari sits with a crimson box decorated in a pattern of black damask and tied with a black velvet bow. The box is a meter long and a third of a meter high. He sighs, unties the bow, and is treated to a velvet gown made to his measurements with a scandalously low back. There are black shoes with soles in matching red, black opera-length gloves, and a crimson and gold beaded chain for his hair. Shadrack always waxes poetic about Yuuri’s hair. Mari hands Yuuri a note from the bottom of the box along with a gilded envelope addressed simply to _Darling_.

“Why won’t you let me try?” Mari asks. “I’ve not aged past my prime, I can find a suitor instead of you lowering yourself to...him.”

“Not one with his net worth.” Yuuri smiles, frozen and brittle. “We both know his preference.”

“Yuuri—” Mari begins. There is no use in continuing, and Yuuri throws the note on the fire unopened.

They both know what it says.

  


* * *

  


A week later, a carriage covered in so much gold it’s obscene brings Yuuri to the Von Buelow manor. They are new money with no established name, and their estate is gaudy and ostentatious as is typical of people new to their station yet trying to assert their wealth.

Yuuri is assisted down by a footman, and he gives a polite nod from behind a carnival mask of black silk covered in gold and white beading. His hair is half up with the rest cascading down his bare shoulders thanks to the barber being a frivolity he can no longer afford, though it’s quite lovely all told with him dressed to the nines as he is. It is also an homage to someone who was special to him once, but who died shortly before Yuuri and Mari lost their parents. 

Yuuri enters the grand hall to the sight of crowds of revelers, all of whom are behind masks as well. The crowd wear shades of pure white and pale cream, and upon spotting Shadrack in finery of ebony, scarlet, and gold, Yuuri swallows back the urge to cast up his counts from the realization of the purpose for his attire.

For the first time, Yuuri cannot push the knowledge of his impending imprisonment in this gilded cage aside with pragmatism. He longs to scream, to fight and claw his way out of this mess, to plead the heavens to restore his family and send Victor back to him like he’d promised Yuuri all those years ago. Victor lied through no fault of his own, and because there is no kindness in the stars, Yuuri’s parents also perished at sea the following year. 

Perhaps Yuuri can find a secluded room to hide until Shadrack is well within his cups then escape, as he appears to have gone unnoticed.

“Pardon, but are you quite alright?”

Yuuri does not recognize the voice, and yet perhaps its warmth and concern suggest that he ought. He turns to see a man with a full face mask of vibrant royal purple and silver obscuring his face, though he is tall with broad shoulders and elegant hands in deep aubergine gloves that cover his thumbs while leaving his other fingers bare. The rest of his suit is that same vibrant purple and black with shimmering bits of silver shot through his jacket. 

“I daresay I am not,” Yuuri answers. A butler walks by with a tray of champagne in crystal flutes. Yuuri takes one and downs half in a single drink.

His companion takes one for himself. “I would think someone as fetching as yourself would enjoy such an event.”

Yuuri swallows the remainder of his champagne. “I would rather not discuss it.”

“Of course,” he’s told.

There’s something about this stranger, Yuuri thinks as he carefully watches him from behind his mask. A gravity surrounds him that Yuuri is pulled into, like an inescapable orbit. He can’t see his eyes, the mask muffles his voice, and the ambient lighting of the gala obscures his hair color with a jaundiced shade of yellow, but his presence casts Yuuri’s thoughts to a long-haired boy wearing eyes like the sea and a smile like a Valentine card from his youth he once believed in more than anyone.

No longer. 

  


“Excuse me,” Yuuri says, and he brushes past the man, opening a heavy door into a moonlit study. Yuuri removes his mask and fights back the urge to weep. He’s convinced himself since age fifteen he has no tears left to cry, but perhaps he miscalculated. Maybe he can call a carriage, go home, put an end to this farce that is somehow also a trap.

The family manor, the hot springs, the businesses all will be lost, and Mari will have to work like a woman of lesser name and social standing. He cannot be so selfish to toss out the remaining scraps of the Katsuki legacy or force his sister into a world to which she does not belong.

Yuuri stands by a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that’s by the window. None of the leather spines show the slightest use, the library just another sign of the lack of substance to Shadrack’s family. The door shuts across the room, and Yuuri sighs, certain that his not-quite betrothed has come to collect.

“I do not wish to pry,” says the masked stranger instead. Yuuri cannot stop from sighing with audible relief. “I simply think perhaps you can use a...friend.”

He could use many, truth be told. Yuuri isn’t sure why he starts talking, but he does. “You called me _fetching,_ well that is no doubt his intent in gifting me this gown. I’m to marry Shadrack, or rather, agree to do so with a week, as I have a good name but poor finances. His name is nothing, but his coffers are close to bursting. He’s made no secret of his ardor for me, and so...here I am.”

The stranger’s silence is heavy. “I see.”

Yuuri looks at his reflection in the window. Even to his own self, he’s lovely tonight with his eyes lined in kohl and a red stain on his lips. Maybe Victor would have liked it.

He shoves the thought away. His fate is sealed, and his downfall will be the longing for that which is out of grasp.

Yuuri can feel the man stand close behind him, the weight of his presence as well as the heat from his body. His hand rests on Yuuri’s waist with a familiarity that would normally cause Yuuri to lash out. Here it makes him feel emboldened, the air crackling with an electric current between them. The stranger’s bare fingers are smooth, and he smells familiar. He smells like cedar rose and a bit of spice, which again pings Yuuri’s mind as something familiar instead of solely intimate.

“I know you do not wish to discuss it,” his companion says. “But even from behind your mask, your pain is visible. I… do not like to see someone so lovely suffer with such strength. I would like to help however I may.”

 _Find a key to my prison_ , Yuuri considers screaming. 

“No one should be so miserable,” the man continues. “You deserve happiness.”

“I no longer recall what that is,” Yuuri retorts. “And I shall not ever again, for I will be engaged within a fortnight to Shadrack. He was the highest bidder.”

There’s a few moments worth of pause. “And should an alternative present himself?”

“There is no one,” Yuuri says as he feels his eyes burn from tears that won’t come. “Shadrack is the only option.”

The man’s voice is suddenly clearer. He must have removed his mask also. “There are always escape routes. They may take a while to find, but you cannot sacrifice your hopes.”

Yuuri turns, but the lighting is so poor and he also left his spectacles at home due to the event. He cannot see his face clearly. The stranger calls to him in a way no one has since he was fifteen, caught in a summer rain with Victor. They had laughed, Victor’s waist length hair turned almost pewter from the water, and Yuuri had loved him so much he forgot himself and kissed him behind Victor’s uncle’s stables. 

My little sparrow, Victor said when it ended with obvious happiness and affection in his eyes meant for Yuuri alone. _Hold onto that until you’re seventeen, when I can address it with proper courtship, alright?_

Yuuri turned seventeen, but before that Victor perished in a fire along with his uncle, and then his own parents capsized at sea.

There have been so few positive emotions for Yuuri in the last five years, such fleeting instances of joy, so few genuine smiles on his face. He was alive then, happy, with decades ahead of him, and in this moment, he decides that a rash grip on the last time he may ever feel free is his only method to stay sane. Like he did with Victor almost in another life, Yuuri tilts his head up to find his stranger’s lips in the dark.

He tastes of champagne and the terrine served on canapes carried by Shadrack’s servants, he feels solid and real, and Yuuri clings to his lapels as the levees blockading his emotions, his _desire,_ break. Yuuri’s entire body floods instantly, with heat and the full force of his half-decade of longing. The one kiss he shared with Victor has seared a brand onto his heart, and he cannot tell if it’s a memory or if the mystery man actually does kiss like him.

His stranger tugs on his hand, and they move from the window to the neighboring bookshelves. He presses Yuuri into stacks of embossed leather, and Yuuri sighs, dragging him still closer by the silken fabric in his jacket. His lips break from Yuuri’s, pressing across his jaw before dropping to the pulse now racing in his throat. 

Yuuri wants to live, wants highs and lows, in-betweens, slow, restful Sundays and dizzying formal occasions, the mundane tasks of running the businesses, the joys of strolling hand-in-hand with someone who treats him with care and not as some kind of arm trophy. He ignores all of the rules of his engagement in the now to stoke this fire, to heal and lighten the weight of his tainted heart, fleeting though this moment may be.

His gentleman breathes hotly over his collarbone, his hand finding purchase under the heavy silk-velvet on the bare flesh of Yuuri’s thigh. Yuuri pulls one of the black gloves off with his teeth, dropping it to the ground so he can touch his partner unobstructed. If only this were Victor, he thinks as his midnight lover moves his hand inward to hold Yuuri’s hardened sex. Yuuri undoes his trousers, and from the moan he receives in return, Yuuri has undone his partner in equal measure.

Within Yuuri’s silken underpinnings, he is slick, swollen, and aching. He needs to be touched without even such a thin obstruction, and as if he can sense his need, his partner performs this very task, his closed hand pumping up and down Yuuri’s shaft. Yuuri is careful not to cry out, his breaths hitching higher as he envelopes his partner’s equally turgid member, earning him the prize of a low groan and a nip at his Adam’s apple.

  


Their situation is more than precarious, and Yuuri loses himself in wanton need, the drive towards that one perfect moment of bliss that will burst through the endings of his nerves. He can feel it approaching at the edge of his vision, and his partner thrusts his hips towards his bare hands with less precision and greater urgency.

Yuuri’s life ends the minute he agrees to marry Shadrack but for now, here in this darkened room, he is _free_ like a flock of birds soaring over the horizon. Yuuri pants and shakes as he tumbles down the precipice of his pleasure, soiling the undergarments and the lining of his gown. His companion presses him deeper into the books, stealing his breath with a shattering kiss as he finds his own completion.

It takes several minutes before Yuuri recognizes he’s been despoilt in the home of the man who he’s essentially engaged to. The scandal may be impossible to navigate. Before this fully sinks in, he is kissed again in a way that makes him think of life and love — nothing more or less. 

This kiss is so familiar, so like Victor’s, he can almost feel a summer rain misting his face. His cheeks are wet. The man dries the tracks on his face with an index finger. Yuuri mourns for the best thing he never had. A kiss presses into his hairline at his forehead. Another to his eyelashes on each eye, then the tip of his nose. “My little sparrow.” Yuuri can barely hear the man’s whisper. For a moment his heart fills with hope before the weight of reality crushes it. 

He spoke too quietly… it’s a trick of Yuuri’s imagination.

Yuuri blinks back a fresh set of tears as he smooths down the gown and puts back on the errant glove. He’s certain his hair is a nest of rats, but with no lighting or mirror, he cannot fix it. The man drapes something over his shoulders as he places a kiss at the nape of Yuuri’s neck. It’s the coat, Yuuri thinks, the violet and black that should clash with his red but compliments it instead.

Before Yuuri can flee, his stranger catches his wrist. He presses a kiss to the back of his hand, respectful and soft. Yuuri feels his knees weaken as he turns to go. He doesn’t allow the man to ask any questions as he runs, stealing in the dark down a servant’s staircase and to the back of the manor. There are coaches waiting to take people home at the end of the event, and Yuuri recognizes the one sent for him. The footman helps him up, and they head back to Yu-Topia.

Yuuri frets because he will have to pay the driver for his silence. There are gold coins in the pockets of the stranger’s jacket. He hesitates, but gives the driver a gold piece upon their arrival. “I stayed home sick,” Yuuri says, his tone commanding in spite of everything else.

The driver, a jovial boy with sandy hair and a beard to match, winks with a tip of his cap. “Influenza is particularly bad this year, sir.”

Yuuri breathes easier. He enters from the back of the manor for surely Mari will ask too many questions, ascending to his suite using the servant’s stairwell, and he gathers the clothing with care, frowning at the stains on the underpinnings and lining, as well as a few spots from his dalliance partner’s satisfaction.

Yuuri hangs the purple jacket with reverence and throws the gown along with its trappings on the ground like trash. Instead of sleeping, he buries his face in his hands and weeps.

* * *

The ruse of being ill serves him well, as he is left alone for most of the following day. A broken heart and shattered hopes are not physical ailments, but Yuuri cannot muster the strength to eat or even get out of bed just the same. At least, not until supper, when an insistent Mari throws a dinner jacket at him that long has gone out of style. “Get up, we have a visitor,” she manages as she attempts to manhandle him into propriety.

“Mari,” he complains.

“Yuuri,” she counters. “Believe me when I say… this is worth it.”

Yuuri grudgingly gets dressed, not bothering to neaten or tie back his hair, and he trails after her from his suite into the front room. “The Queen herself could be present and I would not find this wor…” The sight before him not only makes Yuuri discontinue his speech, he almost faints. His hair is short now, close-cropped at his nape with longer fringe framing his eyes, his jaw more square, his back broader, but the shade of aqua in his eyes and the softness of his smile makes it clear that somehow defying all possibility, Victor Nikiforov is _alive_.

Yuuri immediately fusses with his hair, trying to find a ribbon or literally anything to make himself look more composed. 

Mari notices and smirks. "Don't mind me,” she says with a sly expression as moves out of the way to a far corner of the room. 

Victor’s expression is somewhere between shock and joy. He’s so like the boy he was, and the shock gives way to Yuuri’s childish young love becoming something fiercer and more mature. “You died,” comes out of Yuuri’s mouth before he can shape the phrasing into something less blunt. 

“I got better,” Victor answers. “I do have scars for the trouble, but I got better.” 

“I am also scarred,” Yuuri says before clamping his mouth shut. 

“I am aware,” Victor says with obvious pain. “I spent the last years recovering and navigating the complexities of my inheritance, as Uncle Yakov had many foreign business holdings on top of what he had here. I’m about to begin work on rebuilding the manor proper, across the lake from Yu-Topia as before.” 

“That is wonderful,” Yuuri says with a real smile. 

Victor’s expression becomes more bashful. “Yuuri… I hope I am not presumptuous but did you perchance borrow a jacket of mine last evening?” 

Yuuri feels faint for a second time. Fate is too cruel, he decides. He did hear it after all, the nickname Victor has always called him. Though, now that Yuuri is essentially promised to another, this cannot ever be more than that stolen moment. Yuuri hides his face behind his hands solely so Victor does not see him cry. “I should… retrieve it, if you’ll excuse—” 

“Well, rather,” Victor says. “I… would like to make a proposal, provided I’m not too late. I’m aware it’s been quite some time since we last met, and while I am not aware of the nuances, I do know that your finances could be better. I’ve straightened out all of my estate, and to be honest… if I paid off seven times your debt, I would need for nothing even if I live to be two-hundred.” 

His eyes are so soft, so blue. Yuuri cannot breathe. 

“What if I were the highest bidder?” Victor asks. “After a more… proper courtship, of course, but if you are amenable, I would like to honor the promise I made when we were young.” 

A sting pierces Yuuri’s pride. “This is charity,” he declares. 

“No,” Victor replies. “No, if I were penniless I would ask you this, as not a moment’s passed since we parted that my thoughts have not turned to you, the years stolen from us, and how much I long to make up for them.”

Yuuri swallows back his tears. There is a catch, there has to be, life has been far too unkind— 

“There is no catch, my little sparrow,” Victor says, and oh Lord, Yuuri spoke out loud. “I would marry you regardless, but I want to help save your legacy. It happens to align I can do both, if you should be so willing.” 

Yuuri stares with a mouth full of dry cotton. 

Mari rolls her eyes. “Say ‘yes,’ you buffoon.” She shoves him towards Victor, who catches him with such ease as though they do this every single day, the same ease with which he captured Yuuri’s heart all those years ago by simply being himself. 

“Yes,” Yuuri breathes, and Victor cheers, whirling him around in a circle. He bends Yuuri to kiss him, and as he does, Yuuri allows himself for the first time in years to feel genuine joy and happiness, for his heart is truy whole at last.

**Author's Note:**

> If you need a visual reference for Shadrack, he looks like Zac Efron when he had a mustache. Horrific, no?
> 
> When Pickle joined Eros and said she wanted to do like a bodice ripper Harlequin romance deal and asked if a writer would into collaborating, I jumped all over it because I had an idea for one in the back of my head for going on a year. We hope that you enjoy the spicy Katsudon goodness. 💋🔥
> 
> [Dommi's Tumblr](https://sinkingorswimming.tumblr.com) | [Dommi's Twitter](https://twitter.com/sink_or_swim)| [Pickle's Tumblr](https://picklestpickle.tumblr.com) | [Pickle's Twitter](https://twitter.com/picklestpickle)


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